Radiance (29 page)

“I don’t have to go to school today, Mama said.”

He raises his eyebrow, then takes off his cap and wipes his brow with the back of his hand.

“Hot already. Today will be scorching.”

“I smell snow.”

“Do you? You’ve got a keen nose then. Why are you home? Don’t they need you girls moving rubble downtown?”

“I’ve been given a different job.” She switches feet. It is difficult to balance and talk.

“Something top secret. A government job?”

“Mr. Takahura, why do you spend so much time on your bushes?”

He laughs.

“Does your daughter ask you to?”

“My daughter may be no lover of beauty, perhaps that is what you mean. But these azaleas must be trimmed, even in wartime. Otherwise when the war is over, nothing will be as it was.”

He says this and then he looks troubled, and Keiko knows he wishes he had not spoken. Keiko has lost a father, albeit a father she hardly thinks of, but Mr. Takahura has lost nobody, having only one daughter. Yesterday she heard that daughter saying she wanted to go to Shikoku to stay with her aunt until she gives birth, to get away from the city and the heat. But Mr. Takahura told her there were no good doctors left on Shikoku, and besides—this he asserted strongly—Hiroshima was a safer place to be than an island.

“Why is Hiroshima safe?” Keiko says now.

Takahura-san pauses, the scissors raised in his right hand. “Hiroshima is like Kyoto,” he says. “A city with a great history and an ancient castle. Throughout the world people recognize that it would be uncivilized to bomb such a place.”

“That is not what you told me last time, Mr. Takahura.”

Last time he had told her that Hiroshima would not be bombed because so many of its citizens had emigrated to America. They sent a special delegation from California to speak to Mr. Truman, he had said.

High above, over Keiko’s left eyebrow, something glints in the sky. She turns to look, craning her neck, raising one hand to block the sun. A small silver airplane buzzes into view, flying towards downtown. She sees planes every day here, and sometimes
she is afraid, especially when a formation of airplanes flies low over their house. Then Mama gets her to dive beneath the table. But there is nothing in this plane to frighten Keiko. The all-clear has sounded; this plane is a Japanese aircraft going to refuel or, at worst, an American reconnaissance plane. It is all alone, flying high, off to somewhere else.

As she watches, a spot the size of a fly drops from the plane, a single blemish against the whiteness of sky, then needles blind her eyeballs and she is knocked sideways through the air. The moss-covered stones hurl themselves at Mr. Takahura, smashing the wall between them.

I
RENE FLEW THROUGH THE BRONZE DOORS
of the
Sunday Review
building, which wheeled and spat her out. She adjusted the veiling of her hat, then clicked her way over to Daisy. Her raglan sleeves billowed open, offering glimpses of red satin. Satin buttons adorned the wrists of her gloves. Without waiting to hear why Daisy had summoned her, she took her friend by the arm, led her across the street, holding up a hand to stop traffic, then thrust open the door of a café. They sat in a booth and ordered coffees. Perhaps to stop Daisy from speaking first, Irene began to talk—though it was less talk than free-form recitation. She held her coffee cup in one hand, gloves in the other, and beat time with them as she talked, flicking them nervously at the table. “Here,” she said, “are the components of an anti–hydrogen bomb tour.” Podiums had been rented, train berths booked.
Ask a Doctor
had advertised its TV debut. The volume of detail that
poured from Irene’s mouth left Daisy itchy all over, but still Irene continued, from the rental of coffee urns to the securing of Robert J. Oppenheimer, from promotional posters featuring Keiko against a background of a mushroom cloud to dealing with Quaker organizers in Pittsburgh who wanted to start their event with fifteen minutes of complete silence.

Irene tucked a curl behind her ear. “Now,” she said, “enough about this.” She laid her gloves on the table, pressed them flat. “Tell me why you needed to see me.”

Daisy’s heart was beating fast. She reached into her purse for her cigarettes and her hands shook. Irene was watching her, half smiling. “You seem upset,” she said.

“I am upset.”

Irene raised an eyebrow at this, then twisted and picked up a bit of gum wrap from the heel of her shoe, disposing of it in the ashtray.

“Go on.”

Daisy took a long drag on her cigarette, then sipped her coffee. “Irene,” she began. “I’ve searched my heart.”

“I like that expression. It makes it sound as though the heart has compartments. And what did you find?”

“I’ve searched my heart.” Daisy spoke more firmly. “I was up all night, and when it was day, I telephoned.”

“Damned early too, but never mind. Who needs sleep? It’s overrated.” Irene stopped: Daisy’s face had not a trace of her usual social smile. “Go on, then,” she said.

It was true what Daisy had said—she had been up all night. In the early morning she had spoken to Walter, charging him to look after the girl. Then Daisy had dressed, choosing her clothes with exaggerated carefulness, and Walter had driven her to the train station.

“Look after her.”

“I’ll try.”

He had sat in the car, watching her stout, muscled buttocks crossing the platform, then he had driven away.

“Go on,” Irene said now.

“Tomorrow the bandages come off.”

“Finally.”

“Yes, finally.” Daisy waited, Irene watching her. “I am sure you know my feelings in the matter. And Walter’s too. We don’t think she should go on tour. Or appear on
Ask a Doctor,
or talk to the press. It’s all a ghastly mistake, and we mustn’t do it to her.”

Irene’s nose twitched, that tick Daisy knew so well. “I can see you feel this deeply.”

“Yes I do. She could get citizenship, go to college. We don’t have much money, but Walter and I could save.”

“That’s a sweet idea.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not sweet. You always say that about me, but I’m not sweet at all.”

“My mistake.”

“I just happen to know what Keiko needs.”

“And what’s that?”

“To start over without people peering at her all the time, or pointing, or saying, ‘There’s the girl with the blasted face.’ She told me her story last night, Irene.”

“Really?” Irene leaned forward with large eyes.

Daisy nodded.

“Tell me.”

“She told me the whole thing. It was—” Daisy stopped.

“As bad as that?”

“It was awful—it was—I begged her not to speak.”

Irene bit her fingernail. “It was riveting then?”

“Don’t.” Daisy sat back.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t do that. The look on your face—as though she’s your prey!”

“Quite a choice of words.”

“Irene, please.” Daisy tried again. The girl was, she said, a remarkable child, and yes, she was a child: a girl on the edge of adulthood but not yet grown. She was not merely an A-bomb victim, or a story, or the best weapon the Project had against the H-bomb; she was a girl. She had come to America to escape the ravages of the bomb. But if Irene and the others made her relive her experiences again and again, they ran the risk of destroying her, turning her into a person with only one experience, one reason to exist, to say,
This is what it was like—the blast, the heat, searching for water.

“Don’t you see, Irene?” Daisy leaned across the table. “She will never be able to escape.” She closed her eyes and saw the sickening pins of light, the blast tearing the air with a crack of thunder.
Pika-don,
Keiko had called it, a name children used to describe the bomb. It meant, “the big flash-boom.”

Irene shook her head. “Your compassion does you credit, Daisy,” she said, “but it’s too late. If Keiko had wanted peace, she should have stayed home, not come to America to have expensive surgery on her face. It’s cost us tens of thousands of dollars.”

“I don’t think she knew what it entailed.”

“There was a lineup of Hiroshima Maidens, all with scarred faces, all ready and waiting to condemn the H-bomb. Girls who needed this surgery more than Keiko. But she convinced us to choose her. She decided to be best.”

“The best what? The best scarred maiden anyone could wish for?”

“Yes, if you want to put it that way.”

“But that’s not who she is!” Again Daisy saw the girl spinning
on one foot on a rock, holding up her fingers. “Don’t make her into that!”

“I’m not doing anything—this
is
who she is—or who she sold herself as, and that’s what counts. We’ve built an entire campaign around her.”

“I don’t care about the campaign. I want you to leave her alone.”

Irene laughed—one short bark. “Alone in Riverside Meadows, with you and Walter and the rest of your neighbours? What makes you so sure that Keiko wants that?”

“She needs to rest.”

“I’d double-check that, Daisy. I had a talk with Keiko this morning, after you’d left the house, and she said something entirely different.”

“You telephoned her?”

“Why not?”

“You waited until I’d left?” Daisy stood up.

“Please, Daisy. Keep your shirt on. I didn’t do anything underhanded. I’m still allowed to talk to her, I suppose. She isn’t your exclusive property, is she?”

Daisy sat down again. That was true. What had she been thinking?

Irene reached into her bag for her cigarette case, offering one, which Daisy refused.

“We had a profitable talk. She said she had spoken to you. And as a matter of fact I suppose I ought to thank you: you seem to have jogged her memory.”

“I did nothing of the kind. She told me she wanted me to hear the story. I begged her not to tell me.”

“Yes, well, you’re good at opening people up. I told you that.”

“
I didn’t open her up.”
But as Daisy cried this, she wasn’t completely sure. She
had
begged Keiko to stop, but underneath she had felt a furtive stirring—wanting to hear the worst, feeling that it
was her right, at last, to know everything, so that there would be no more secret places between them. So that she could protect her.

“Regardless. She’s ready to begin; her story’s all there. It might have been an awkward conversation except that I’m rather good at these things. What she wanted, what it all came down to, was some financial remuneration.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I mentioned a fundraising component to the tour and she pricked up her ears and before you know it we’d agreed on a sum, a cut of each tour stop. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to give her some independence.”

Daisy took out some change and laid it on the table. “We’re getting nowhere,” she said. “I’m going to talk to Dr. Carney.”

“Yes do, and congratulate Raymond, please, on solving the riddle of the girl’s recalcitrance. He’s the one who thought to offer a cut of the fundraising. Such a simple solution.”

“You’re bribing her, Irene—”

“Call it what you will.”

“—and I don’t believe a word you say.”

“But you should believe me. And in fact, I think you do. You’re the one who said the girl was cold. You pointed it out. You’re the one who alerted us to her peculiarities. And now you’re the one who’s delivered her story. Well done.”

For a second Daisy felt dizzy. She grabbed hold of the shiny aluminium edge of the tabletop. She was remembering the contents of the cheese box, the girl’s look of hatred that first night; then she saw her crying out, standing in her underwear, legs covered in dust, blood pouring from her ear.

“Yes,” Irene said, “go home and talk to her. You’ll find that she’s quite communicative, especially if there’s something in it for her.”

“This is your view of things.” Daisy stood up. “Don’t you see what you’re doing?”

“What am I doing?”

“Everyone turns her into what they need her to be. And what you see is a woman prepared to do anything to get her way. You’ve made her over in your own image.” Daisy closed her eyes. She felt it again: the blast, the child running towards the bridge, hearing cries for water, all this pressed against the other pattern, where a clock chimed the quarter-hour and gradations of light played through the screens. There was a world in the shadows, but you could only see it if you squinted, let your eyes adjust to the half-light. But Irene didn’t give a hoot about any of that. All she cared about was the blast, the flash, the damage.

Daisy opened her eyes. Irene was watching her, two lines of worry on the bridge of her nose.

“You’ve been awfully lonely out there, haven’t you?” she said.

The change Daisy had placed on the table was insufficient. She threw down more, knocking her cup with her purse. Coffee spilled across the table and dripped onto Irene’s lap. They both looked at it, then Irene reached for a serviette and began to blot it.

“It’s not wash-and-wear, dear,” she said.

Daisy turned on her heel and left the coffee shop.

M
AMA CANNOT HAVE GONE FAR
. White dust falls like snow. She looks down to see that she is naked. Sticky blood pours from her ear.

These are details to remember, facts to tell herself and the others.

What happened first? Her own voice shouting as loud as she could, her mouth full of dust. She lies on her back covered in stones and wood and broken roof tiles. She spits, then shouts again, hardly any sound coming. She cannot move.

Takahura-san’s voice above her: “Keiko. Say something.”

“I’m here.”

“You’re alive.”

“I can’t move my legs.”

She waits in darkness, something stuck in her ribs, until he moves the debris away and she can breathe. His face looming over her is a jammy pulp. His shirt hangs from him in strips of rag; the scissors are still attached to his thumb. He pulls tiles from her chest and legs, then lifts her up and sets her on an overturned rock. Nothing looks right: the rocks have rolled everywhere; the house—she turns to see Grandfather’s house, but it has collapsed. Strips of Ojii-chan’s cypress doors poke from the rock and tile. She will get in trouble for this, though it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t leave the hibachi on.